Texas A&M Transportation Institutehttps://tti.tamu.edu
Saving Lives, Time and Resources.Thu, 24 May 2018 16:26:34 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.6https://tti.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/cropped-tti-square-with-sailboat-and-block-620-transparent-32x32.pngTexas A&M Transportation Institutehttps://tti.tamu.edu
3232143648224You Don’t Have To Be In a Wreck To Be a Traffic Casualtyhttps://tti.tamu.edu/news/you-dont-have-to-be-in-a-wreck-to-be-a-traffic-casualty/
Thu, 24 May 2018 15:28:10 +0000https://tti.tamu.edu/?p=31169By Joe Zietsman, Haneen Khreis, and Tara Ramani

If recent trends continue, more than 6 million roadway crashes will happen this year in the U.S. Even if your safe driving habits and good luck help you to avoid being in one of them, what happens on our streets and highways is, nonetheless, almost certain to affect your health — even if you don’t drive, ride, or walk.

To be at risk, all you have to do is breathe.

Along with impairment, distraction, and fatigue, we can also count breathing as a roadway risk factor because traffic-related air pollution is a persistent threat to our health, though it’s not as easily quantified or routinely monitored as other road dangers are. Crashes are violent and powerfully vivid events, instantaneous in their outcomes, requiring little effort on our part to grasp their impact. Air pollution is less dramatic, wreaking its havoc more slowly and quietly, obscuring the fact that it kills far more people annually than motor vehicle crashes.

Respiratory disease is a leading cause of illness and death in the U.S. every year, especially in children, who are more vulnerable to the effects of air pollution. And although outdoor air quality has generally improved since the 1990s, transportation sources still constitute more than half of the air pollution that Americans encounter every day.

At the same time, both population and vehicle volumes are growing steadily, putting more people near traffic sources of air pollution. So, while roadway vehicles continue to make us very mobile, efficient, and productive, they’re also making us very sick.

A 2010 study by the Health Effects Institute found that vehicle emissions can have adverse health effects for anyone within 300 to 500 meters of a highway or major road – areas where 30 to 45 percent of all people in North America live. Those adverse effects include, but are not limited to: premature birth and low birth weight, cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, and asthma.

In conservative estimates, research from The World Bank in 2014 attributed 189,000 deaths worldwide in 2010 to traffic-related air pollution. Deaths over the past two decades attributable to air pollution (much of which comes from road traffic) have increased by 11 percent.

A 2018 study in Bradford, U.K. found that up to 24 percent of all new annual childhood asthma cases may be specifically attributable to air pollution from traffic.

At the Center for Advancing Research in Transportation Emissions, Energy, and Health (CARTEEH), we’re working to better understand the ways and the degrees to which transportation emissions directly affect public health. We’ve brought together experts from two distinct disciplines – transportation and public health – who in the past haven’t routinely worked together, to find answers to some very pressing questions. Among them:

How do emissions from trucks and cargo ship engines affect the health of people living and working near sea ports?

How does traffic-related pollution affect the health of people living and working near U.S.-Mexico border crossings?

To what extent do active living practices (like walking and bicycling) increase exposure to traffic-related emissions for people in underserved populations?

What is the childhood burden of disease attributable to traffic-related air pollution across the U.S.?

It’s simply getting more difficult to avoid traffic-related air pollution. Electrified cars offer no escape; fuel for those cleaner vehicles comes from power plants, most of which dump their emissions into the same air that we breathe – albeit some distance away. A healthy economy adds to the challenge; more consumer spending leads to more shipping, involving more truck traffic, which produces more emissions. We find no panacea in technology, either, as automated and connected vehicles may result in more vehicle travel. Again, more emissions.

For many of us, it’s easy to relegate this to a list of “big-city” problems, dismissing it as virtually non-existent if we can’t literally see it, like we see the ominous haze blanketing a major urban core on ozone action days. But be assured, if you live near busy streets and highways, it’s affecting you more than you might suspect, and more than it should.

This story also appeared in the April 22, 2018, edition of the San Antonio Express-News. View the story.

Joe Zietsman is the Director of the Center for Advancing Research in Transportation Emissions, Energy, and Health (CARTEEH) at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Haneen Khreis is an Assistant Research Scientist at CARTEEH. Tara Ramani is an Assistant Director for Research at CARTEEH.

]]>31169Study Suggests Ride-Hailing Customers Will Help to Shape Self-driving Car Use Patternshttps://tti.tamu.edu/news/study-suggests-ride-hailing-customers-will-help-to-shape-self-driving-car-use-patterns/
Mon, 21 May 2018 15:27:53 +0000https://tti.tamu.edu/?p=31164What type of self-driving car is in your future?(The four group descriptions — all users, non-users, new users, and long-term users, illustrate how often the survey respondents use ride-hailing services.)

The latest research on consumer attitudes of automated travel suggests that frequent users of ride-hailing services are more likely to also use self-driving cars as they become more available, though many aren’t necessarily planning to own one.

The findings are instructive for emerging industries, researchers say, because the size of the ride-hailing market in a city provides a good estimate of the likely size of the early self-driving market, the characteristics of ride-hailing users define characteristics of early users of self-driving cars, and their travel patterns can inform how the services will impact an area.

The study, sponsored by Lyft, is based on a survey of 3,275 people in Boston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and San Francisco/Silicon Valley, cities where self-driving vehicles are now being tested on public roads. The analysis was done by researchers at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Ride-hailing services, also known as transportation network companies (TNCs), emerged in the late 2000s, using smartphone apps to connect passengers with drivers who use their private vehicles to provide rides for a fee. Although the young industry is still evolving, TNCs have generally found their market niche in urban areas.

Self-driving technology has advanced rapidly in recent years, but the costs and benefits of the technology are still being discovered. Those impacts will depend a lot on how and when the vehicles will be used, something that will be shaped largely by early adopters – those people who tend to start using a technology as soon as it’s available.

“If you’re one of those who lined up early on the first day that the iPhone 10 was available (whether you really needed one or not), you’re more likely to be among the first people lining up to use a self-driving car,” says Johanna Zmud, a study author. “Similarly, if you’re a frequent TNC customer, you’re more likely to be among the first who routinely use a self-driving car.”

Those early adopters are typically: aged 18 to 34, evenly split among males and females, middle-income, without children, without a vehicle or in a one-vehicle household, and, currently very aware of self-driving vehicles.

Overall, nearly 60 percent of respondents indicated an intent to use self-driving cars in some form. Intent was about 40 percent for non-users of ride-hailing users, 60 percent among new users, and 75 percent among long-term ride-hailing users.

Respondents preferred shared mobility services over private ownership of a self-driving car. About 50 percent preferred self-driving cars as a feature of a ride-hailing service; 40 percent preferred them in the context of car-sharing services (in which cars are rented for short periods, usually by the hour); 33 percent leaned toward private ownership. Researchers see several reasons for the inclination against private ownership.

Sensors needed to enable self-driving technology are expensive, but the cost is less of a barrier for fleet vehicles because they can generate revenue throughout the day while private vehicles do not. Testing results of self-driving cars on public roadways will need to be certified as safe before potential users and policy makers give a green light to wider use, something that will take many years to achieve. And, early uses of highly automated cars are likely to be geographically limited, so buyers are unlikely to invest in a car that can’t go anywhere its owner wishes to go.

Manufacturers and service providers face other obstacles as well, researchers say – not the least of which is that safety concerns and lack of trust in the technology remain barriers to owning or using self-driving cars. The Tempe, Arizona incident in March in which a self-driving car was involved in a pedestrian fatality – the first known death of a person struck by an autonomous vehicle on a public road – is one example.

“The competition to commercialize self-driving technologies must be balanced with the need to be completely satisfied – through robust research and testing – that the technologies are as foolproof as possible before their commercialization on public roadways,” Zmud says.

Texas is one of several states named by the federal government as a proving ground for that research, involving both test tracks and designated urban and rural roadways for real-world evaluation of self-driving technology. The Texas Automated Vehicle Proving Grounds Partnership includes TTI, the University of Texas at Austin, and Southwest Research Institute.

Predicting “a bit of the wild west out there” as automated vehicles begin to share the road with human-driven vehicles, Greg Winfree, agency director of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI), was the opening speaker of a Bloomberg Government symposium on transportation technologies, held in Washington, D.C., May 16.

The morning gathering examined the topic of infrastructure, related to future transportation technologies, as part of Bloomberg Government’s “Next.” series.

“There is going to be what I’ve been calling a mosh pit for the next 20 to 30 years where all these human-driven cars are trying to get along with all these self-driving cars in the same space,” Winfree told the group. “There is conflict at the outset with all this new technology that is coming out. It’s simple human behavior versus digitized behavior and how is that going to correspond? That’s why there is a need for these vehicles to have the ability of situational awareness of other vehicles in the vicinity.”

As part of the conflict between self- and human-driven vehicles, Winfree explained that people might react differently to various scenarios than do autonomous vehicles, which are programmed to follow the rules of the road. He emphasized the importance of perfecting connected vehicles before automated vehicles are deployed.

“There are vagaries and peculiarities in how humans operate vehicles. The need for these vehicles to have the ability to correspond with one another will be a critical aspect in improving the safety profile,” he said.

Winfree’s presentation included a TTI-produced video that highlighted the fact that 93 percent of all of the 5.5 million vehicle crashes in the United States in 2016 were caused by human error.

The Bloomberg Government symposium included speakers and panel participants from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Communications Commission, American Automobile Association and Uber.

As our transportation system becomes more reliant on private-sector innovation, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) and the McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University are combining forces in a new partnership.

The partnership was announced May 9 at the Texas A&M Transportation Technology Conference by TTI Agency Director Greg Winfree and Mays Business School Dean Eli Jones. It is the first partnership of its kind for both TTI and Mays, since it marries the entrepreneurial-focused educational and experiential opportunities offered by the McFerrin Center with the deep transportation research expertise at TTI.

“We have the unique opportunity to help advance the discussion, create new knowledge and bridge some of the gaps between the public and private sectors,” Winfree said in announcing the partnership, called the “Innovation Hub @ TTI.” “The Innovation Hub is designed to provide seed funding, to develop forward-thinking transportation-research ideas at TTI and to facilitate the incubation and commercialization of these ideas into vital products and services with the help of the McFerrin Center.”

The Innovation Hub @ TTI will function as a catalyst for interdisciplinary research and innovation in emerging transportation solutions and will include the involvement of TTI researchers, Texas A&M students, private-sector partners and the broader transportation community.

“TTI’s researchers are a shining example of transportation thought leaders, and we are pleased to partner with TTI on this new venture,” said Blake Petty, McFerrin Center director. “We envision the Innovation Hub @ TTI will make a significant impact on how we innovate and translate next-generation transportation technologies to the marketplace. We also see the partnership as a prototype for problem-solving innovation and entrepreneurship training across the Texas A&M System.”

Leading the initiative for TTI, Senior Research Fellow Ginger Goodin says the Innovation Hub @ TTI represents a paradigm shift in how the Institute approaches transportation problems and formulates solutions. “As a public transportation research agency, it is becoming increasingly important for us to engage more deliberately with the private sector. The McFerrin Center offers TTI expertise in facilitating industrial partnerships and identifying marketplace needs to help us grow our private-sector relationships.”

On Tuesday, May 8, 3M Company announced a $1.6 million investment in The Texas A&M University System’s evolving RELLIS Campus. The funding will be used to build a simulated rain range to support research by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) and Texas A&M University in connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology, as well as to support related graduate assistantships and faculty research.

Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp said that the 3M investment would be central to transforming the former U.S. Air Force Base to a center of advanced problem-solving to develop safe and effective CAV solutions. “3M’s investment will substantially enhance and expand our research capabilities and provide more opportunities for education and training,” Sharp said. “It is also an exciting example of how the A&M System can work with private industry to address the most challenging transportation issues of today and tomorrow.”

The announcement was highlighted at the third annual Texas A&M Transportation Technology Conference.

Envisioned to be 1,000 feet long and 50 feet wide, the simulated rain range will be used to test interactions between vehicle sensors and highway infrastructure under wet conditions for vehicles traveling at speeds of up to 60 mph. The sensors are essential to emerging technologies that enable self-driving cars, and to the systems that enable those cars to connect and communicate with roadway signs, signals and lane markings.

Connected and automated transportation technologies offer great promise for safe and efficient mobility. Central to that promise is that vehicles and infrastructure function reliably under all conditions, including inclement weather. The work supported by 3M’s investment will help to ensure that promise is realized.

3M’s investment will also pay for research equipment and support of graduate students involved in the research. The funding will support two doctoral-level engineering students for three years. 3M recognizes Texas A&M University as an excellent academic institution from which to recruit technical employees for their R&D enterprises.

3M’s investment builds upon a decades-long partnership with TTI. Last year 3M and the A&M System executed a five-year agreement to develop roadway signage and pavement marking technologies that can help to communicate safety information to automated driving systems as well as human drivers.

“With 80 years of experience in transportation safety, this investment is just the latest example of 3M’s commitment that applies science to improve lives around the world,” said Bob Anderson, 3M’s Vice President of Research and Development for its Safety and Graphics Business Group. “3M sees connected and automated vehicle technologies reshaping transportation and mobility, and we are pleased to extend our collaboration with TTI to advance the capabilities of infrastructure to help create the roadways of the future.”

The RELLIS Campus is designed to unite future-focused companies, faculty and students in a unique purpose built to foster applied research, technology development, testing and evaluation, higher education, and career training. The campus includes test beds and proving grounds that focus primarily on robotics, self-driving and connected vehicles, and advanced manufacturing, as well as smart power grids and water systems.

“No testing facility anywhere can match the potential of the RELLIS Campus as we work to build systems that enable safe and reliable communication between cars and our roadways,” said TTI Agency Director Greg Winfree. “And TTI is both proud and grateful to have 3M as a valued partner in that mission.”

Metsker-Galarza, who works in TTI’s Mobility Analysis Program, was recognized during the annual Texas A&M University College of Architecture’s Landscape and Urban Planning Awards Banquet. She received her degree in environmental geoscience from Texas A&M and will graduate in December with a master’s degree in urban planning.

The Outstanding Student Award is named after David Pugh, the former head of Texas A&M’s Department of Urban Planning and coordinator of the University’s Master of Urban Planning (MUP) Program. Pugh passed away last December.

The award is given to “a graduating MUP student who exemplifies exceptional service and academic excellence.”

“I didn’t know Dr. Pugh, but he positively affected the careers and lives of the same mentors I look up to — which is a testament to the lives he touched,” Metsker-Galarza said. “The David L. Pugh Award recognizes outstanding students, and any recognition I receive is due to the mentors and the opportunities I’ve had during my time at TTI and Texas A&M. With their help I see how the real world and school mesh together — providing me with learning opportunities few get to experience. Working at TTI has allowed me to learn from people who are the best in the industry; applying that to my educational career is a special opportunity.”

]]>31023Brydia Receives Partner of Excellence Award from Texas A&M’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineeringhttps://tti.tamu.edu/news/brydia-receives-partner-of-excellence-award-from-texas-ams-department-of-industrial-and-systems-engineering/
Mon, 30 Apr 2018 16:15:03 +0000https://tti.tamu.edu/?p=31001Texas A&M University’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISEN), part of Texas A&M’s College of Engineering, has recognized Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) Senior Research Scientist Bob Brydia for his ongoing collaboration with ISEN. Brydia was presented with ISEN’s Partner of Excellence Award during the department’s annual gala April 13. He was also recently appointed an ISEN adjunct professor of practice.

“Over the last 18 months, Bob has worked closely with our students on 30 different projects he brought us as part of his leadership role with the Campus Transportation Technology Initiative [CTTI],” explains Jose Vazquez, director of the ISEN Student Resource Center. “His one-on-one interactions with the students and his interest in furthering their education with hands-on research has truly been appreciated. This Partner of Excellence Award is our way of saying thank you to someone who has made a significant impact.”

Bob Brydia

The team projects become part of the students’ capstone design course, a two semester-long course designed to “equip future engineers with important design, communication and presentation experience.”

“Seeing the ingenuity and enthusiasm the students bring to the projects has been invigorating and rewarding.” Brydia says. “The immersive involvement with ISEN in the capstone course also helps build on the overall collaboration between research and academia across campus and can create new opportunities for both TTI and the academic departments.”

Peter Lange, Texas A&M’s Associate Vice President of Transportation Services who works closely with Brydia on CTTI, also received an ISEN Partner of Excellence Award.

Senior Research Engineer Kay Fitzpatrick, nationally known pedestrian safety researcher at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI), is accustomed to phone calls from traffic engineers who want to discuss her lifesaving research results. She is expecting a lot more of those calls now that the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has issued Interim Approval 21 for a pedestrian traffic control device she’s extensively studied.

Fitzpatrick led several research projects on the Rectangular Rapid-Flashing Beacon (RRFB), a pedestrian-activated crossing warning sign. With FHWA’s interim approval, Fitzpatrick believes a lot more engineers will want to install the device.

“Two of those studies were referenced in the interim approval document,” Fitzpatrick explains. “Our research demonstrated that the RRFB shows a lot of promise in creating safer pedestrian and school crossings, in some cases. But the RRFB is not a panacea. There are conditions where it may not be very effective based on our studies that focused on driver yield rates, which varied dramatically depending on the individual pedestrian crossing.”

The project—Will You Stop for Me? Roadway Design and Traffic Control Device Influences on Drivers Yielding to Pedestrians in a Crosswalk with a Rectangular Rapid-Flashing Beacon—was funded by TTI’s Center for Transportation Safety in 2016 and analyzed data collected that year along with data from previous research. The research team discovered some of those variables that could have an effect on driver yielding.

“When I talk to engineers interested in the RRFB device and our research, I emphasize the use of caution,” Fitzpatrick says. “Our research did not answer all the questions, and it’s clear that additional studies are needed to determine under what conditions this particular traffic control device is most effective.”

]]>30986SAFE-D Inspires Students at Huge STEM Expohttps://tti.tamu.edu/news/safe-d-inspires-students-at-huge-stem-expo/
Tue, 24 Apr 2018 14:17:46 +0000https://tti.tamu.edu/?p=30982A young student driving the driving simulator at the Safe-D booth at the USA Science and Engineering Festival Expo in Washington, D.C. on April 7-8.

Students and researchers with TTI’s Safety through Disruption (Safe-D) University Transportation Center (UTC) took part in the largest science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) event in the nation April 7–8. The USA Science and Engineering Festival Expo in Washington, D.C., was attended by about 350,000 students, science and technology educators, researchers and parents.

Thousands of booths and stage shows featured hands-on activities related to all things science and technology, designed to promote STEM careers and address the severe shortage of science and engineering talent.

“It was a fast-paced, invigorating event,” Safe-D Administrator Martha Raney Taylor says. “In the Safe-D booth alone, we interacted with several thousand students who took part in the activities. You could tell they were engaged, intrigued and energized.”

The Safe-D booth featured research, staff and students from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, two of the partners in the Safe-D UTC consortium.

Two TTI-developed activities were featured:

A retroreflectivity demonstration developed by Research Engineer Melisa Finley, in which students learned how road signs are able to be seen at night; and

A driving simulator in which students “drove” a course simulating an automated vehicle that suddenly needed driver assistance.

The simulator demonstration was part of a Safe-D project led by Thomas Ferris, TTI associate research scientist and associate professor in Texas A&M’s Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering.

“The SAFE-D project is designed to develop countermeasures for problems that might arise on a partially-automated vehicle,” Ferris explains. “It was great to see kids take part in the demonstration, giving them a hands-on experience of what real-world research looks like. The expo was a huge success.”

]]>30982CIR Ribbon Cutting Ceremony Highlights Expected Infrastructure Innovations for State, Nationhttps://tti.tamu.edu/news/cir-ribbon-cutting-ceremony-highlights-expected-infrastructure-innovations-for-state-nation/
Thu, 12 Apr 2018 16:10:22 +0000https://tti.tamu.edu/?p=30968Credited with acquiring the legislative funding needed for The Texas A&M University System’s Center for Infrastructure Renewal (CIR), Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was the special guest for the center’s ribbon-cutting ceremony held on the RELLIS Campus April 11. The 138,000-square-foot, multidisciplinary research center boasts state-of-the-art research facilities and laboratories aimed at making infrastructure smarter, more resilient, and longer lasting. Ground was broken for the $80 million project 17 months ago.

“At this particular time in history, infrastructure is a part of the national conversation,” Greg Winfree, agency director of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI), told the crowd gathered for the ceremony. “It’s never been more important to our state and to our country.”

The center is a joint facility operated by TTI and the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) that will leverage the strengths of numerous engineering professionals to develop research-based solutions to engineering and transportation challenges.

“Imagine roads being paved with new materials that instantly harden so roads reopen immediately afterward,” A&M System Chancellor John Sharp said, highlighting some of the expected products of the center. “New ways to use asphalt that will pay for this place 50 times over, bridges that have sensors that self-report when they weaken and need replacing, and homes and businesses that are flood- and wind-proof. Just imagine what this facility is going to be.”

“We all agree that in order for Texas to continue to grow and prosper, there needs to be a focus on transportation and infrastructure. This venture, the Center for Infrastructure Renewal, will lead to research and development of new technologies and will be a beacon for our future growth.” John Raney, State Representative, District 14

Prior to the ceremony, Sharp, Patrick, Vice Chancellor and Dean of Engineering and TEES Director M. Katherine Banks, and several other elected officials who had critical roles in the conceptualization, funding, support and construction of the center toured its newly opened laboratories. The CIR is designed to renew every public-critical infrastructure system—from transportation to nuclear reactors to water systems. This is a one-of-a-kind coordinated, cross-disciplinary effort to focus on improving the nation’s infrastructure for the long term.

Sharp introduced Patrick, telling the crowd that the CIR “absolutely would not have happened without him.”

“After walking through here, I know this is an investment that’s going to pay great dividends to the university, other universities, to the country, to the state of Texas,” Patrick said from the podium. “It’s going to make infrastructure more efficient, more affordable and safer for us.”

With the CIR stage party looking on, TAMU System Chancellor John Sharp addresses the crowd.

“I jumped at the chance to promote [the CIR]. It’s the right vision for Texas and the nation. This facility is going to pay itself off 50 to 100 times for the Texas taxpayers.” Paul Bettencourt, State Senator, District 7

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a proclamation that was presented to Sharp by Tommy Williams, Senior Advisor for Fiscal Affairs for the governor, recognizing the CIR ribbon cutting ceremony.

Charles Schwartz, chairman of the A&M System Board of Regents, gave attendees an overview of the new campus.

“A few years ago, RELLIS existed only as an idea in the mind of John Sharp,” Schwartz stated. “In a few short years, we’ve seen an amazing development on these 2,000 acres. CIR will be a place where we’ll deliver the kind of professional workforce development training that we need in this state. We’ll see big things from these laboratories, and the people of the state of Texas will benefit from them.”

Other members of the stage party included: Texas Senator Paul Bettencourt of Houston; Texas Representative John Raney, of Bryan/College Station; Texas Representative Paul Workman of Austin; Texas A&M University President Michael Young; Banks; and Zachary Grasley, CIR director.

“It’s my personal opinion that this facility is the most innovative project in education—not just in Texas, but the entire United states. We have $300 million in construction authorized by the Texas A&M Board of Regents for this campus. Amazing things we will do on this campus.” Charles Schwartz, Chairman, The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents